Quote:
Originally Posted by
Shaw 
Shaw waved his hand to indicate he'd be accepting no more answers on his board. It was all full and stuff anyway. 'Cept for the helmet girl. He'd let her chainsaw her answer first.
"Alllllll righty then. Let's see." Shaw got up to his feet, put his hands to the small of his back and surveyed their list for a long, long time. Then he scratched his stubble for an equally long time. When he finally turned back around again, he was startled to see so many KIDS looking at him.
"Uhhh right then there. Well some of you know and some of you don't. That's alright, you'll learn probably. You can't conjure food, so if you put food up there go ahead and pretend it wasn't you but your friend that wrote it." Sound advice. "And you can't conjure up OR transfigure something into a real person, so all you wanting friends and professors..." yeah, no. He wasn't offended at all.
The scratching began again. "Basically, if I can't carry it in my hand then you can't transfigure it. Yall know that? Why'd someone write happiness? You know where we are?" It sort of sounded like Shaw didn't know himself.
Right then. Shaw went back to the board, studied the chalk, then erased about half of the answers. He occasionally threw nervous glances over his shoulder and during the middle of his erasing and writing, he retrieved his alligator cloak and re-donned it. When he finally finished, the board read:
"There. There we go. There we go now. I put them there together like that. Makes sense. We'll get to that. First I need to know how do we go about transfiguring things? Magic words? Wand movements? Right? Where's them come from? Who makes up the words? What are the words? Why'd I'd make them there groups you think?" He pointed to the grouped words on the board.
Theodore was glad that Shaw was no longer brandishing the chainsaw around. That thing was scary enough even as it lay idle in the front of the room. Screwing up his face, his listened hard to the teacher's next instructions. This guy had a language all on his own. Shawnese, or Shawlish, or the language of a cockney troll who liked chainsaws. "Well, to transfigure things, you need an object or person, a wand, and an incantation. They came from... whatever witch or wizard invented the spells in the first place. As for the groups..." He trailed off, not exactly sure of what it all meant. The colors indicated their houses, obviously, but... it was all so confusing.
You made the objects into group that match the characteristics of our houses?"